The struggle by President Donald J. Trump and his administration to bring efficiency and accountability to government spending is about to storm a previously unbreachable bastion: the Pentagon.
Today (10) President Donald Trump signed an executive order to review the Pentagon’s weapons acquisition process.
The order includes assessments of top weapons programs behind schedule and beset by cost overruns.
Bloomberg reported:
“All major defense-acquisitions programs will be reviewed” to determine if they are complying with the administration’s new policy goals that emphasize “speed, flexibility and execution,” according to a summary accompanying the order. “Any program more than 15% behind schedule or 15% over cost will be scrutinized for cancellation.”
Trump, signing the order in the Oval Office, said the current procurement process was ‘ridiculous’. ‘What they do, they get the highest price and not even good-looking equipment’, he said. ‘And we’re changing it’.”
One of the most high-profiles under scrutiny are Boeing’s new Air Force One planes for the president, five years behind schedule.
“It also cites ‘nine Navy ship programs — not just individual ships, but the entire procurement program’ that — ‘are between one and three years behind schedule’ as well as the ‘first flight of the Air Force’s new ICBM, the Sentinel’ that’s ‘already two years behind schedule and 37% more expensive than originally promised’.”
[…] The review may zero in on the $485 billion F-35 stealth fighter jet program, the costliest Pentagon acquisition effort.”
Moving away from the ‘mismanagement and inertia’, Trump vows to ‘reprioritize our defense acquisition system’ as the Pentagon as ‘alarmingly slow’ in deploying weapons for every military service.
The new Trump order means the Pentagon will now consider cancelling any project more than 15 percent over budget or behind schedule.
Breaking Defense reported:
“That directive could tee up a list of potential cancellations far beyond what the Defense Department typically considers, as it usually takes a so-called critical “Nunn-McCurdy breach” where costs have ballooned by at least 50 percent before the department weighs whether to stop a program.
‘Any program more than 15 percent behind schedule based on the current Acquisition Program Baseline (APB), 15 percent over cost based on the current APB, unable to meet any key performance parameters, or unaligned with the Secretary of Defense’s mission priorities, will be considered for potential cancellation’, states the executive order. ‘The Secretary of Defense shall submit the potential cancellation list to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for future budget determinations’.
‘As I work to again rebuild America’s military strength and deterrence that Joe Biden so foolishly squandered, we need to take a long, hard look at defense procurement and our defense industrial base, because it’s been withered down to nothing’, Trump said, according to a White House fact sheet. ‘Given all the money we spend on the Pentagon, it’s unacceptable that we would ever run out of ammunition or be unable to quickly produce the weapons needed’.”
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